“After all, you can repeat it; it doesn’t matter, it’s such a common name.  There is public policy in love-matches which cause a rich girl to marry a poor man, or a poor girl to marry a rich man.  It sets money circulating, it prevents its remaining in the same place, it keeps capital moving.  Well, three-fourths of the love-matches were formerly made by the dance.  Now there are short interviews in parlors, in galleries, and at the Opera Comique.  They chat; that’s all right, but chatting is not sufficient.  Wit is something, but not everything.  A waltz furnishes much knowledge that conversation cannot.  Dress-makers nowadays are so wily.  They know how to bring out this point and hide that; they remodel bad figures.  They give plumpness and roundness to the thin; they make hips, shoulders—­everything, in fact.  One doesn’t know what to expect, science has made such advances.  The eye may be deceived, but the hand of an experienced dancer never!  A waltzer with tact knows how to find out the exact truth about things.”

“Oh! oh!”

“Remaining all the time, sir, perfectly respectful and perfectly reserved.  Good heavens! look at myself, for instance.  It is to waltzing that I owe my happiness.  Mme. Morin was not then Mme. Morin.  I kept my eye on her, but I hesitated.  She appeared thin, and—­well, I’ll admit that to marry a thin woman didn’t suit my ideas.  You know every one has his ideals.  So, sir, I was still hesitating, when one evening, at the wedding of one of my friends, a very capable young man, a deputy manager of a department at the Ministry of Religion, they started a little dance.  For the first waltz I asked the one who was to be my companion through life.  Immediately I felt in my hand a delightful figure—­one of those full but supple figures; and while waltzing, quite enchanted, I was saying to myself, ‘She isn’t really thin! she isn’t really thin!’ I took her back to her place after the waltz, and went at once to her mother to ask for her hand, which was granted me.  For fourteen years I have been the happiest of men, and perhaps I shouldn’t have made that marriage if I hadn’t known how to waltz.  You see, sir, the results of a waltz?”

“Perfectly.”

“That is not all, sir.  Thanks to dancing, one discovers not only the agreeable points of a person, the fulness of her figure, the lithesomeness of her waist, but also, in a briskly led waltz, a little examination of the health and constitution of a woman can be had.  I remember one evening twelve or so years ago—­in the Rue Le Peletier, in the old Opera-house, which has burned down—­I was on the stage awaiting my cue for the dance in ‘William Tell,’ you know, in the third act.  Two subscribers were talking quite close to me, in the wings.  One of the gentlemen was an old pupil of mine.  I have had so many pupils!  Without wishing to, I heard scraps of the conversation, and these two sentences struck my ear:  ‘Well, have you decided?’ ‘Oh,’ replied